


and you make me feel

by preciousthings



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Friends with Benefits: ten years later, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-15 17:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15418077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preciousthings/pseuds/preciousthings
Summary: Tommy takes a deep breath. “You ever, like, think about ten years ago?”





	and you make me feel

**Author's Note:**

> apparently i go here now! it's been a wild week and a half but i couldn't get this out of my head and the words formed a lot easier than i expected them to. title from an abba song that's been stuck in my head for two weeks now.
> 
> thanks to l, m and s for reading, enabling, etc. <3
> 
> remember, the fourth wall is your friend, please respect that and the locked nature of this fic!

There’s a football game on. The Patriots are down by four touchdowns in the third quarter and Tommy doesn’t even _care_ , can’t bring himself to get angry about it or have hope that they’ll come back. If it were up to him, he’d down the rest of his beer, turn the TV off and just fall asleep on Jon’s couch, but it isn’t up to him, because Jon is here too, actually giving a shit, blissfully unaware of the confusing shit going on in Tommy’s head.

It must be nice to be Jon right now, is all.

The Pats go down by another touchdown, and Tommy watches the way Jon’s hand tightens around the neck of his bottle before he throws back whatever was left in it. He stands up, scrubbing his free hand across his face.

“Want another?” he asks, walking toward the kitchen.

“I’m good.” Tommy motions toward his bottle, still full enough that he could get away with nursing it for a bit longer. Jon comes back and scrolls through his phone, presumably on Twitter, while commercials play.

Tommy wonders if Jon can feel the tension here, or if it’s all in his head.

“Hey Jon,” he says, and he’s already regretting opening his mouth at all, about to open up a discussion that lived and died ten years ago just because it’s been harder and harder to ignore lately.

Jon hums an affirmative, taking a sip from his bottle and putting his phone back on the table.

Tommy takes a deep breath. “You ever, like, think about ten years ago?”

“What, like, working in the Senate?” Jon asks, and for someone as fucking brilliant as Jon is, Tommy can’t see how he’d miss the point right now, at a time where Tommy desperately needs him to _get it._

Tommy sighs. “No, Jon, like— _us_.”

He sees the moment it clicks for Jon, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. “Tommy,” he says, and Tommy can read between the lines here, knows that it’s a plea to drop this topic and move on from it for now, maybe forever, but Tommy is tired of dropping it and not talking about it and pretending that none of it happened.

He wants to say all of that, but the words die in his throat and he’s scrambling to string them together. “I don’t—why do you act like nothing happened? A lot happened.”

 _A lot happened_ . Fucking eloquent. It’s an understatement to sum up everything that happened as just _a lot_ , but Jon’s the one who has a way with words, not Tommy. Tommy doesn’t know what word he could even use to somehow encompass what they were; not boyfriends, they’d never labeled it. High-functioning friends with benefits seems like the best way to put it, but there were always, at least on Tommy’s end, a lot of feelings.

“Why are you bringing this up now?” Jon asks.

Tommy wishes there was an easy way to answer that. A way to answer it without saying _I think about it a lot_ , _and_ _I think I was probably in love with you back then,_ _and_ _I’m probably still in love with you now_. He wishes he could just shrug and Jon would accept his lack of an answer at face value, but they both know Jon isn’t that kind of person.

He shrugs anyway. He picks up his drink, takes a sip. “I’ve just—been thinking about it, okay?”

“I guess I—I think about it sometimes,” Jon says, fiddling with the label on his bottle. He’s looking down, not at Tommy. It's like—the admission is already more than Tommy was expecting to get out of Jon. He’ll live without the eye contact.

“Oh,” Tommy says rather stupidly, at a loss for anything that’ll sound coherent once it’s left his mouth. He kind of wishes he’d thought this through, or were a little braver when it came to his Jon Thing.

“Is that a problem?” Jon asks quietly. “You’re the one who—” he pauses, still picking at the bottle’s label. “You brought this up to me.”

“Why don’t we talk about it? Why haven’t we talked about it since we—“

“Tommy,” Jon says, abrupt.

“It’s been ten years, Jon, and I think about it a lot,” Tommy says. “About, like, how good we would’ve been together, probably—“

“ _Tommy_ ,” Jon says again, an edge to his voice.

“What?” Tommy asks.

“Nothing, I—“ Jon says, weak. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I wanted to ask you out. Ten fucking years ago, Jon. Imagine doing everything we’ve done together, but doing it _together_. I wanted to ask you—I almost did, I—would you have said yes? Ten years ago, if I asked, would you have said yes?”

“What if it all went horribly wrong, we wouldn’t even be here together right now,” Jon says. “Did you ever think that, like, just keeping this friendship was enough? This is too important to me. I can’t imagine doing this shit without you, Tommy.”

Tommy’s considered that. He’d considered it all, back then and right now. He considers it every day that he wakes up in San Francisco, six hours away from Jon. It’s part of what drove the impulse to leave work early and get into his car on a Thursday afternoon, braving all the California traffic to stay here for less than 48 hours.

Jon had always seemed worth it, but. But Jon didn’t think _he_ was worth it, is what he gathers, and it’s really hard to act like that doesn’t fucking sting.

“So, it’s a no, then.”

“It’s a—“ Jon says, and then it’s quiet, save for the TV still playing the game, the sound of Jon’s bottle being placed down on a coaster. “I don’t _know_.”

Tommy opens his mouth, but it’s like his brain is disconnected from everything else; he isn’t sure what he’s going to say anymore. So it’s probably a good thing that Jon surges forward to kiss Tommy.

‘Probably’ being the operative word here.

Tommy hasn’t kissed Jon in ten years, but there isn’t a single part of him that’s forgotten this. It’s like comfort, and something he just knows how to do, muscle memory kicking in like tying his shoes or driving a car. Jon fists one of his hands in Tommy’s hair and tugs a little. Tommy lets him, lets Jon call the shots because his brain is still trying to catch up to _this_. It’s almost effortless the way Jon manages to move both of them so Tommy is straddling his hips without even breaking the kiss.

Tommy knows where this is going, and it’s probably a mistake to do this with Jon _now_ , but there isn’t a single part of him that hasn’t stopped wanting Jon.

 

 

Tommy wakes up alone in Jon’s bed, and as he blinks awake and sits up against the headboard, he thinks this probably wouldn’t be that strange if he hadn’t slept with Jon last night.

And that’s—

Tommy’s kind of getting mixed signals here, as if he hasn’t been for the past ten years.

It was Jon who made the effort to keep Tommy in his bed when Tommy was going to retreat to the couch, which was the plan to begin with. Jon’s bed wasn’t supposed to be an option. But that’s where Tommy is now, Jon’s sheets pooled at his hips. He touches the side of his neck, pressing the bruise he knows Jon left there. He’s surrounded by everything Jon, but he doesn’t know where the fuck Jon went.

On a run, maybe, but he probably would’ve woken Tommy up if that were the case. It’s entirely possible that Jon is just awake before him, which, though it’s happened before, is a long shot.

It’s still the worst morning-after feeling Tommy’s had in a while, and he’s not even hungover this time.

He gets up eventually, picking up a t-shirt that’s on the floor and pulling it over his head. It’s just plain gray and could feasibly be either of theirs, but Tommy know that it probably isn't his. He doesn’t even bother looking for sweats to put on, just retreats downstairs in boxers.

Jon is sitting at the breakfast bar, back facing the stairs. He must not hear Tommy’s footsteps, because he startles when Tommy says, “Morning, Favs.” He walks around to the other side of the bar, facing Jon.

“Oh,” Jon says. “You’re awake.”

“I can go back upstairs,” Tommy says. “If that’s what you want.” He thinks he’s doing a good job at keeping his voice as neutral as possible, hiding the bitterness and downright hurt he’s feeling, maybe.

“No,” Jon says immediately. “No, stay, I—we should talk. There’s coffee in the pot and sugar in the mug next to it already. I made pancakes, too. They’re in the oven to stay warm.”

“Thanks,” Tommy mumbles. “You been up for a while?”

Jon shrugs. It’s a non-committal answer that Tommy takes to mean yes. It might even mean _I’ve been awake more than asleep since you went to bed_ , because Jon looks the way he does when he pulls all nighters; Tommy’s been around him for enough of them to know. He turns around to pour himself coffee, hoping the caffeine will make him feel a little bit more alive.

“I’ve been thinking a lot,” Jon starts, and there’s a split second where Tommy considers cracking a joke, but he’s not Lovett, and he slept with Jon, so this is probably like, pretty significant. “I think I was wrong ten years ago. ”

Tommy’s still not looking at Jon, and he almost drops the fucking coffee pot. “Yeah?” he asks, pushing down hope and thoughts of Jon changing his mind because this could mean _nothing_. He should know better by now.

“Yeah,” Jon says. “Like maybe—I think we probably would’ve made a good couple. I think it was dumb of me to worry about our friendship, because we’ve always clicked, but I also think that we’re so solid now that maybe we should give this dating thing a shot.”

Tommy freezes, halfway to the oven, and turns to face Jon. He puts his mug down on the countertop closest to him.

“Sorry I was so dense,” Jon says, and Tommy, in a complete lapse of self control, or something, thinks _screw breakfast_ , and walks back to Jon. The stool Jon is sitting on spins, so Tommy spins him around by his shoulders and pulls him into a kiss. It’s less intense than the one from last night, no hair pulling or straddling, just—

Just Jon and Tommy, and ten years of history on the table again.  

“You _were_ dense,” Tommy breathes, teasing. “Ten _years_ , Jon.”

“I was a little slow on the uptake,” Jon says, laughing. “Maybe more than a little.”

“Glad you caught on,” Tommy says, smiling.

Jon kisses Tommy again, rather than saying anything else.

And it’s like—

Tommy knows they’ve got some stuff to work out. This isn’t going to magically change everything and erase the years in between their physical relationship ending and its apparent new beginning, but it’s a fairly blank slate now. They still live six hours apart, and Tommy barely has 24 hours left here, this time, but everything he wants is right here, at his fingertips now, and—

It’s probably a good reason to start figuring out that move.   


**Author's Note:**

> deep cut from the google doc comments:
> 
>   * "HE'S REALLY OBLIVIOUS I LOVE HIM BUT U CAN TELL IT GETS PRETTY EMPTY UP THERE! HE'S LUCKY HE'S PRETTY!" - m
> 

> 
> i occasionally hang out on tumblr at [ofspringreturning](http://ofspringreturning.tumblr.com)!


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